Trump disbands two business councils

Move comes after CEOs quit in protest

This file photo taken on February 03, 2017 shows Mary Barra (2nd L), CEO of General Motors, Gary Cohn (2nd R), President of President of Goldman Sachs, and Doug McMillon (R), CEO of Walmart, listing while U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before a policy and strategy forum with executives at the White House. Trump announced Wednesday he was scrapping two business advisory councils in the wake of several high-profile resignations in protest over his comments on a white supremacist rally in Virginia that turned violent.

U.S. President Donald Trump disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after corporate CEOs quit in protest at his remarks blaming violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, not only on white nationalists but also on the protesters who opposed them.

Mr. Trump announced the break-up of the advisory councils after 3M Co’s Inge Thulin became the latest of several chief executives to leave Mr. Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, and the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum broke up of its own will. “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

A former senior Trump administration official raised the prospect that some White House officials could quit because of Mr. Trump’s comments. “If you have some high-profile individuals leaving, you may have a whole host of high-profile individuals leaving,” said the official. Vice President Mike Pence, who is cutting short a trip to Latin America, said at a news conference in Chile that “I stand with the President and I stand by those words.”